iPhone Review
As if the world needed another iPhone review, I finally feel like I’ve had enough time with mine to offer up my opinion. For the record, I acquired my iPhone last Friday night in Stamford, Connecticut at 11:30. Walked right in to the Apple Store, told them what I wanted, and walked out with it three minutes later. No line, no crowds, no fuss.
I activated it the next morning. Being away from home, I had my wife’s iBook with me. This wasn’t such a big deal, except that it was running OS X 10.4.9 and iTunes 7.2. So, before I could activate the phone, I had to upgrade both. Enter Starbucks and the T-Mobile hotspot WiFi. $9.95 and 25 minutes later, I was upgraded and ready to activate the phone.
Activation went smoothly for me. I created a new account and new phone number, so it was as basic an activation as you can get. The iPhone synced everything pretty quickly, and I was off to put it to the real world test.
Calls:
First and foremost, this thing is a phone, so that’s where I’ll start with the review. In a nutshell, it does everything you want a phone to do and more. Call quality is clear*. It sounds as good to me as my last mobile phone, the Motorola Razr.
Having left AT&T (then Cingular) last year, I was a little leery of returning for another 2 years. So far, the service has been fine. I never had a problem with Cingular’s customer service, so I’m hoping that doesn’t become an issue now that they have become AT&T. I had switched my wife and I to T-Mobile because she kept losing calls on her commute to work. Thankfully, she’s not working anymore, so that is no longer an issue. I’m a pretty light talker, so I opted for the cheapest plan. Most of my communicating through the iPhone will be through email and web. Long live unlimited data plans.
Ok, back to the iPhone…
The first time you use Visual Voicemail you will wonder how you ever got along without it. It is that good.
The only thing I can complain about is the number of taps you need to dial a number. If you are dialing from your favorites, you are talking about a slide and a two taps (maybe three, if you didn’t leave the phone on favorites the last time you used it). Not horrible by any stretch, but definitely something that could be improved. It is almost criminal that there is no voice activated dialing. Macs have had voice interaction since the early 90′s. Apple leaving it off the phone is puzzling.
Email:
Email on the iPhone is awesome. All of my email accounts were added during sync, and they show up individually once you click on the Mail button. I also manually added my Yahoo! email account, to test how good the push email works. In short – it works as advertised. Pushed emails showed up on the iPhone before they did in the browser window I had open on my Mac. Jeff Harrell has had problems with Yahoo! push email not working, but in my testing, it works fine. As always, your mileage may vary.
The only complaints I have about the email client are a lack of a master inbox that encompasses all of your mail accounts, and the inability to adjust the advanced settings to specify a different port for the outgoing mail. Why would this be important? Well, at home I have AT&T DSL, and they block port 25 for outgoing mail. So, when I’m surfing at home on the WiFi, I can’t send mail from my .Mac account because it is fixed to use port 25. Bugger.
Keyboard:
Ok, so I can’t finish talking about email without discussing the iPhone’s touch input keyboard. Yes, there is a learning curve. It only took me a couple hours of use to get comfortable with it, and about two days to be able to type pretty quickly. The biggest problem with the whole touch input keyboard is that in Mail mode, you are fixed to portrait orientation, which gives you a narrow keyboard. In this mode, typing with your thumbs is difficult because the virtual keys are narrow. Of course, if you have smaller thumbs than I do, it might be easy. When the keyboard is in Mail mode, I find myself typing mostly with my index finger, and to my surprise, I’m quite fast at it. When the keyboard allows you to type in landscape mode (in Safari only), I can use my thumbs and type even faster. The iPhone does an excellent job of suggesting words while typing, and quickly learns specific words you might use that wouldn’t be in a dictionary.
Safari:
Apple has nailed the mobile web browsing experience. There is little to say that could be improved upon. My only complaints are echoed by many others – it would be nice to be able to save images from Safari to the Photos app. And of course, Flash is sorely needed for a complete web experience. The big plus to Flash being absent is that all of that annoying Flash advertising on web pages is no longer an issue.
iPod:
Best. iPod. Ever. I really wonder how Apple will get away with selling the old iPods now that the new hotness is here. And as nice is Coverflow is in iTunes, it is even better when used on the handheld device. Apple isn’t lying when they say that the iPhone is the best iPod they’ve ever made.
Camera:
The built-in Camera takes pictures at 1600×1200. For the most part, they look good. A lack of a Flash means that you need a good light source or your pictures will look bad. The iPhone isn’t a camera, and if you expect to use it as such, you will be disappointed. But for the quick candid shot, it works as expected.
Widgets:
The Weather, Stock, Clock and Calendar widgets/apps all do their task just as you would expect. The Google Maps app is even better than advertised. The first time you use it to find a restaurant or a store in your location, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is. However, in my experience, the Map widget tended to crash a good bit.
The SMS app is fine, but I refuse to use it. Why this device doesn’t have an instant messaging client on it is beyond me. AT&T must have pushed hard for SMS only, as that is the only reason that makes any sense. Still, AT&T has AIM on most of their other phones, so I’m perplexed by it’s omission. As soon as Meebo makes an iPhone version of their service, I’m so there.
Battery:
The battery was the biggest question mark for me. In my real world tests, I have been able to go 2 days between charges when just using the Phone and the iPod functionality. When you mix in email and web browsing, you can expect to charge the phone up at the end of the day. For a device like this, it is nearly impossible to say how much time you will get, since each function drains the battery differently. If you plan on using the device for all four of it’s main functions, you can expect to get through a full 14-16 hour day on a full charge. This shouldn’t be a problem for most people, as you just dock the iPhone at the end of the day, and when you get up the next morning, it’s charged and ready to go.
Apple has stated that you can get your battery replaced for $79 plus $6.95 shipping. They claim they will turn it around in 3 business days. Of course, you will lose all of your information when the battery is replaced, so do a full sync before shipping it off.
Conclusion:
This is the best 1.0 device I have ever used. With regard to the hardware, it’s perfect. It’s relatively small and light, the display is gorgeous, and the buttons are placed in a logical, comfortable location for easy use.
It is a big of a stretch to call the iPhone software version 1.0. Much of the underlying technology for the iPhone comes from Mac OS X, which has been in development for nearly twenty years. Safari has been around for about 4 years. The rest of the software components on the iPhone are new, but they show a good deal of maturity. The iPhone itself seems quite stable. I have yet to experience a lock up or device crash. I have had Safari and the Maps app crash on me, but that just means the app closes and you are returned to the home screen.
Sure, as with anything, Apple could make improvements. For me, these are the biggest problems with the iPhone 1.0
- Lack of an IM client is criminal.
- Safari should be able to save images from web pages to the Photo app.
- Mail needs some additional settings to adjust outgoing email ports.
- The notes application is weak (kill the Marker Felt font, too).
- Where’s the to do application?
- Contacts should be accessible form the home screen.
- There should be some way to immediately bring up the phone (maybe holding the home button for 3 seconds or double clicking on it?)
The nice part about the above problems is that each and every one of them can be solved through a software upgrade. Whether Apple does that or leaves them for iPhone 2.0 is anyone’s guess. But none of the above issues are enough to dampen the joy that this device brings. Four and three quarters stars!
